The Arizona Diamondbacks wasted no time making noise at the 2025 Winter Meetings, moving swiftly on Monday morning to reach an agreement with right-handed pitcher on a one-year contract. The deal, first reported by MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand, has not yet been officially acknowledged by the team, but the news immediately caught the attention of clubs and analysts around the league. For Arizona, it represents both a low-risk gamble and a potentially significant rotation upgrade if Soroka can recapture anything close to his early-career form.
Soroka’s name still carries weight because of what he once was: one of baseball’s most promising young pitchers. His introduction to the sport’s biggest stage came during a brilliant rookie campaign with the Atlanta Braves in 2019. At just 21 years old, he delivered one of the most impressive seasons by a young pitcher in recent memory, posting a stellar 2.68 ERA across 29 starts.
That year he earned an NL All-Star nod, finished sixth in Cy Young voting, and was runner-up for the National League Rookie of the Year Award. His poise, command, and ground-ball efficiency seemed to signal the emergence of a long-term anchor for Atlanta’s rotation.
But his rise was derailed by a series of devastating injuries. Soroka tore his right Achilles tendon, a notoriously difficult injury for pitchers to recover from, and then suffered a re-tear during the rehabilitation process.
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These setbacks effectively wiped out both his 2021 and 2022 seasons, cost him critical development time, and cast doubt on whether he would ever regain the athleticism and mechanics that made him successful. What followed has been a long, difficult journey back to something resembling full health.
The 2025 season, however, offered genuine signs of hope. Splitting time between the Washington Nationals and the Chicago Cubs, Soroka—then in his age-27 season—finally logged a meaningful workload again. He made 17 starts and threw 89 2/3 innings, marking his heaviest usage since that outstanding 2019 rookie year.
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While his final ERA of 4.52 may appear modest on paper, deeper metrics painted a far more optimistic picture. According to Statcast data, Soroka’s expected ERA (xERA) sat at a strong 3.43, while opposing batters managed just a .210 expected average against him. These numbers suggested that his results were not fully reflective of how well he actually pitched. Some batted-ball misfortune, defensive lapses behind him, and a few poorly timed big hits inflated his traditional statistics.
Soroka began the year with the Nationals, where he showed flashes of his old self despite not working deep into ballgames. In 16 starts for Washington, he completed six innings only four times, an indication that the club remained cautious with his workload and that he was still building stamina after years lost to injury.
Despite that, his pitch mix looked sharper than it had at any point since his Achilles issues. The standout offering in his four-pitch toolbox was his slurve—a hybrid breaking ball blending the depth of a curveball with the lateral sweep of a slider. Hitters struggled badly against the pitch, whiffing on nearly 40% of swings. Opponents batted a mere .118 against it and slugged just .245, making it one of the most effective breaking pitches thrown by any starter in the league during the year.
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He complemented the slurve with a traditional four-seam fastball, a changeup he relied on mostly when facing left-handed batters, and a sinker deployed against right-handers to generate ground balls. When he executed his game plan, the combination kept hitters off balance and reintroduced the profile he was once known for: a command-first pitcher who forced weak contact rather than overpowering opponents with velocity.
Soroka’s season took an unexpected turn at the Trade Deadline when the Nationals dealt him to the Cubs in exchange for two Minor League prospects. Chicago identified him as a potential mid-rotation stabilizer for their stretch run, but his debut with the club did not go as planned. After only two innings in his first start, Soroka exited with shoulder discomfort that was later diagnosed as a strain, sending him to the injured list for more than a month. Given his injury history, the setback was especially concerning.
Yet his return was one of the more encouraging developments of his season. When Soroka came back in September, the Cubs shifted him into a bullpen role, hoping to manage his workload while still benefiting from his arm.
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The move paid off. He appeared in five more regular-season games out of the bullpen and did not allow a single earned run. The shorter outings allowed him to pitch more aggressively, and the improved results reaffirmed the idea that he still possessed the skills to get big-league hitters out consistently when healthy.
The trajectory of Soroka’s last few years has been anything but smooth. His 2025 rebound came after two disappointing campaigns. In 2023—his first season back on a mound after the Achilles nightmare—he struggled with the Braves, finishing with a 6.40 ERA. Atlanta then traded him to the Chicago White Sox that winter as part of a larger deal.
His 2024 season on the South Side was a grind as well: Soroka went 0-10 with a 4.74 ERA across 25 appearances, nine of which came as starts. Chicago’s rebuilding environment and defensive shortcomings did him no favors, but he still couldn’t fully regain his pre-injury mechanics.
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Despite those challenges, his underlying numbers and flashes of dominance were intriguing enough for the Nationals to sign him to a one-year, $9 million contract prior to the 2025 season—a bet that partially paid off given how effective he looked for stretches of the year. Now, with the Diamondbacks bringing him into the fold, he finds himself with an opportunity to revitalize his career yet again, this time in an organization that has developed a strong reputation for maximizing pitching talent.
For Arizona, Soroka represents a classic high-reward addition: a pitcher who has battled immense adversity but still carries the potential to provide meaningful innings, either as a starter or in a hybrid role. If he can stay healthy and maintain the sharpness of his slurve-centered arsenal, the D-backs may have secured one of the offseason’s sneaky best bargains.
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